The Episcopal Church’s Executive Council opens its Feb. 21-24 meeting at the Sheraton Midwest City Hotel with Morning Prayer. Photo: Mary Frances Schjonberg/ Episcopal News Service

[Episcopal News Service – Midwest City, Oklahoma] Presiding Bishop Michael Curry and the Rev. Gay Clark Jennings, House of Deputies president, placed the future of faith and the church as an institution, and the shape of the Episcopal Church’s relationship with the Anglican Communion, before the Executive Council as it opened its four-day meeting here.

Curry framed his opening remarks around his experience the week before while visiting the Anglican Church of Southern Africa. While there, a young Anglican asked him if there was a future for the church.

“I realized he was asking if there is a future for faith,” he said. “Therefore does the church, the community of people who have faith in Jesus, have a future? That may be one of the most critical question before us in our time.”

The question applies to all faith communities, not just Episcopal ones or even solely Christian ones, he said.

Jennings said if the communion is “not yet able to hold a global meeting of Anglican bishops and spouses to which everyone is invited, then I think we should not be holding global meetings of Anglican bishops and spouses.”

Presiding Bishop Michael Curry poses a question to council members: Is there a future for faith? Photo: Mary Frances Schjonberg/ Episcopal News Service

Do faith and faith communities have a future?

In answer to the question of the church’s future, Curry told the young man, “faith does not have a future if faith and religion is seen and understood primarily and essentially as an institutional arrangement.

“Faith will not have a future if we believe that the church is primarily an institution which we must prop it up to keep it going,” Curry said. “I say that as a 65-year-old man who, when he finishes his term as presiding bishop, will then go on the Church Pension Fund. I’m not anti-institutional.”

The sorts of questions the young man asked, Curry said, are not calling on the church to enact another strategic plan, but to risk “daring to ask the spirit where shall we go?”

Curry reminded the council that the Christian church has “only been an institution periodically; it began as a nascent Jesus Movement.” In later centuries, it became an institution that crowned emperors, only to be divided by theological schisms and reformations. The church has moved from the established churches of the majority to “a fragile minority.”

The way of love exemplified by Jesus is not just the way of love for the world, Curry said. It can be the way of life for the church if it can witness to that way of love. “When we are less than that, then we ought to die because we have nothing to give the world,” he said.

The presiding bishop insisted that the Holy Spirit was inspiring the members of council “to think, to pray, to listen what the spirt is saying to our church and to find our life.

“We may not have easy days ahead of us, but that’s all right. Our Lord was crucified; Pilate thought he killed him – thought he was down for the count, but on Sunday morning, the brother got up and that’s who we follow. If we follow his way of love, then the gates of hell will not prevail against us.”

Council gave Curry a standing ovation when he concluded.

The Rev. Gay Clark Jennings, House of Deputies president and council vice chair, told Executive Council that she hopes there is time to ensure that all bishops’ spouses will be invited to the 2020 Lambeth Conference. Photo: Mary Frances Schjonberg/ Episcopal News Service

Raising the Lambeth question

Anglican Communion Secretary General Josiah Idowu-Fearon wrote in a Feb. 15 Anglican Communion News Service blog that Welby had invited “every active bishop” because “that is how it should be – we are recognizing that all those consecrated into the office of bishop should be able to attend.

“But the invitation process has also needed to take account of the Anglican Communion’s position on marriage which is that it is the lifelong union of a man and a woman,” Idowu-Fearon wrote. “That is the position as set out in Resolution I.10 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference. Given this, it would be inappropriate for same-sex spouses to be invited to the conference.”

Jennings said that Idowu-Fearon’s post promulgated “a misconception about the Anglican Communion’s governance” by claiming that the Anglican Communion’s position on marriage is defined by that resolution.

She said that among the communion’s four Instruments of Communion – the archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Primates’ Meeting and the Anglican Consultative Council, or ACC – only the ACC is seen as the corporate entity of the Anglican Communion by the instruments’ governing documents and British law. Thus, Jennings said, setting policy is the ACC’s job.

She also noted that the resolution’s reference to marriage as a “lifelong union” seems to not pertain to the opposite-sex spouses of bishops who have been divorced and remarried but are still invited to Lambeth. “We are left to conclude that excluding same-sex spouses is a selective decision—perhaps even an arbitrary one,” she said.

Jennings suggested that if the communion cannot resolve to invite all of the bishops’ spouses, “I think that the day is coming when we will need to take a hard look at where and how we invest the resources of The Episcopal Church across the Anglican Communion.”

However, she cautioned, her stance “is not at all the same thing as saying that we should not be in relationship with the rest of the Anglican Communion.”

The Episcopal Church’s 2019-2021 budget pledges $1.15 million to the work of the Anglican Communion office (line 416 here) plus an additional $538,000 in block grants to other communion provinces. The budget also shows nearly $2.3 million in staff costs in the Anglican Communion budget lines, but that money covers members of The Episcopal Church staff who work with partners and program across the communion.

Echoing Curry’s distinction between a church’s institutional structures and the local incarnation of its mission, Jennings said her travels across the communion have shown her that the communion “not as a series of dictates from archbishops or an office in London, but as life-giving, life-saving, mutual relationships rooted in dioceses, congregations and networks across the world.

“That is the Anglican Communion that deserves our energy and attention, our commitment and our resources,” she said.

The impact of Welby’s decision

Welby’s refusal currently effects two bishops and one bishop-elect in the Anglican Communion. Diocese of New York Bishop Assistant Mary Glasspool is currently The Episcopal Church’s one actively serving bishop who has a same-sex spouse.

The Rev. Thomas Brown is due to be ordained and consecrated on June 22 as the next bishop of the Diocese of Maine. He is married to the Rev. Thomas Mousin. The diocese elected Brown on Feb. 9. His election is about to enter the consent process canonically required in all bishop elections.

The only other active bishop in the Anglican Communion to whom Welby’s decision applies is Diocese of Toronto Bishop Suffragan Kevin Robertson, who married Mohan Sharma, his partner of nearly 10 years, on Dec. 28, 2018. The diocese congratulated him on his marriage, which was attended by Toronto Archbishop Colin Johnson and Toronto Bishop Diocesan Andrew Asbil. Robertson recently told Episcopal News Service that Welby told him in person earlier this month that Sharma would not be invited. Robertson and Sharma are the parents of two young girls.

“I cannot overlook the fact that the Anglican Communion Office has created a public situation in which two children are learning that the hierarchy of the church considers their family to be a source of shame and worthy of exclusion,” Jennings said. “That makes me very angry. When little children are collateral damage, that is not the way of love.”

After Jennings concluded, she received a standing ovation from council and Curry replied “Thank you, Madam President. Amen.”

Also on the meeting’s first day

* Executive Council also heard a report from Treasurer Kurt Barnes that showed the church ended the 2016-2018 triennium with between $5 million and $6 million more in income than it had in expenses, due in large part to the startup of some programs that was delayed to the current triennium. The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society’s investment portfolio was down just more than six percent in 2018, Barnes reported, noting that the year was hard on all investments. Saying that the DFMS (the church’s corporate and legal entity) “will always look at the long term,” Barnes said the approximately $40 million investment portfolio’s 10-year annual average is 9.7 percent after fees and expenses.

The portfolio recovered 6 percent in January. “We just hope and pray that it continues for the remainder of this year,” said Barnes, noting that growth this year impacts the amount of money available to the church two years from now, because of the way the budget’s draw on investment income is calculated. Council member Diane Pollard cautioned that some investors fear that January’s investment markets performance was “kind of like Disneyland” and will not be sustained.

“In college I learned that Darwin only used survival of the fittest once or twice, but referred more to empathy and survival is greatest among those who place communal interest first.” Treasurer Kurt Barnes on Episcopal Church support for the Diocese of Cuba #excounpic.twitter.com/8bQSgRkYY9

Barnes also told the council that the sale of a city block in Austin, Texas, that it had hoped would be the site of a new Archives of the Episcopal Church netted “on the order of $20 million” after paying off the debt on the land. The church is bound by a confidentiality agreement typical for transactions of this type and magnitude with the buyers to not yet disclose the purchase price.

Diocese of Utah Bishop Scott Hayashi, an Executive Council member, provides music on Feb. 21 for his colleagues to sing “I want to walk as a child of the light” during Morning Prayer. Photo: Mary Frances Schjonberg/ Episcopal News Service

The rest of the meeting

After the opening plenary on Feb. 21, council spent the rest of the day meeting in its four committees. The same will be true the morning of Feb. 22. Later that day, council members will visit the Oklahoma City Memorial and Museum. The memorial and museum memorialize the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building by Timothy McVeigh, an act of domestic terrorism that killed 168 people and injured 600 others.

Committee meetings will take up the morning of Feb. 23, and members will return to a plenary session that afternoon during which the committees will begin their reports to the full body, proposing resolutions for the full body to consider. The members will travel to St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral in Oklahoma City for Eucharist the morning of Feb. 24. The council will conclude its meeting that afternoon.

The Executive Council carries out the programs and policies adopted by the General Convention, according to Canon I.4 (1). The council comprises 38 members – 20 (four bishops, four priests or deacons and 12 lay people) elected by General Convention and 18 (one clergy and one lay) by the nine provincial synods for six-year terms – plus the presiding bishop and the president of the House of Deputies. In addition, the vice president of the House of Deputies, secretary, chief operating officer, treasurer and chief financial officer have seat and voice but no vote.

The parts of the priest’s vestments are explained at the start of the How2charist. Photo: Screengrab/How2charist

[Episcopal News Service] Run a traditional piece of Episcopal Church formation – the instructed Eucharist – through the new world of digital ministry and what do you get?

You get How2charist, an annotated video with a 28-page discussion guide for learning why Episcopalians do what they do when they celebrate the Eucharist. The on-screen explanations range from descriptions of the priest’s vestments and the vessels used on the altar to explanations of each part of the liturgy, such as the memorial acclamation and the epiclesis.

Many Episcopal priests occasionally preside at a Eucharist during which they stop the service to explain what they are doing and why, discussing tradition and liturgical theology. How2charist offers a seamless Eucharist that explains without stopping the action, so to speak.

The video can be viewed as a whole but is also available in individual chapters to make a four-session small-group series. Two of the sessions cover the flow of the Liturgy of the Word portion of the Eucharist through the Prayers of the People. The next two chapters show the Liturgy of the Table. The full film and the chapters can be viewed online or downloaded to use offline

It’s all free for the taking. The only “charge” is an email address for getting a “token” that provides access to the film and discussion guide.

How2charist is the culmination of a nearly 11-year-old dream of the Rev. Callie Swanlund, an associate rector at St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church in Gladwynne, Pennsylvania. It also represents an innovative collaboration between her and The Episcopal Church’s digital evangelism team.

The Rev. Callie Swanlund has been dreaming about making How2charist since she was in seminary. Photo: Screengrab/How2charist’s trailer

The idea for How2charist came to Swanlund in 2008 when she took a course at Church Divinity School of the Pacific with the Rev. Micah Jackson called “New Media in Worship & Preaching.” Swanlund started with the idea of an instructed Eucharist and thought about VH1’s Pop-Up Video series, which between 1996 and 2006 had put “pop up” bubbles – called “info nuggets” – containing trivia, witticisms and other comments on music videos. Swanlund’s first version was a PowerPoint but, she and others kept thinking bigger.

In a screengrab from How2charist’s trailer, the Rev. Callie Swanlund breaks the host as an explanation appears on the screen.

How2charist has been available just since earlier this year. As of Feb. 20, the film has been viewed, at least in part, 1,310 times. Some 1,350 people have requested access codes to view it and the guide.

Feedback, both to Swanlund personally and via social media posts (which How2charist encourages) have shown her that the creative way that people are using How2charist “goes beyond anything I could have dreamed up,” she said in a telephone interview with Episcopal News Service. Those ways include congregations who will use it to help train their acolytes as well as dioceses using it in their classes for training would-be priests locally.

One congregation plans to “deconstruct” the video, reprinting some of the pop-up explanations to expand the special bulletins they use to guide guests who come to witness baptisms. “It goes back to, in some ways, what I was moving away from in making this digital version, but I love it,” she said. “It shows that they love the information contained it in and not just some flashy model of presentation.”

The film crew, led by Michael Collins, Episcopal Church manager of multimedia services, left, discusses its plan as the Rev. Callie Swanlund stands at the altar and the Rev. Nancy Frausto, a priest in the Diocese of Los Angeles, listens at right. How2charist was staged at Trinity Episcopal Church in Ambler, Pennsylvania. The full-length Spanish version, at which Frausto presided at Church of the Epiphany in Los Angeles, is due out this spring. Photo: Jeremy Tackett

The choice of liturgical style was a challenge. “That was the fear that kept me awake,” Swanlund said. She knew she had a good film crew, a good group of volunteers both on screen and acting as consultants behind the scenes to prevent her from doing something “that is going to get me burned at the stake.” She also knew that “it’s me that it falls on” because she was claiming to be “representing the Eucharist to the entire Episcopal Church.”

Swanlund anticipated valid criticism. She also figured there might be some nitpickers “because we’re Episcopalians and we love to be nitpicky; I think it is one of our core values,” she said, laughing. Such criticism “comes from a place of deep love and care for our liturgy.”

Swanlund aimed for what might be called “a broad church” liturgical style, not too plain or “low church” and not too much of the so-called “smells and bells” associated with a “high-church” style of presiding. She encouraged the volunteer congregation to act the way they would in their own churches. So, some people crossed themselves frequently; others did not. Some sang and prayed with raised hands. Some knelt when others stood.

“I wanted to honor this liturgy that we share. It’s common prayer so I wanted to make it as common as possible, knowing that there are differences,” she said. The discussion guide gives viewers the chance to reflect on the differences they see.

Criticism “has been, so far, less than I anticipated,” but there has been some, she said. Very few people said that they wished the style had been lower, but some wished it had been higher, Swanlund said. And, then, there was the debate on the online discussion site Reddit about whether her left-handed-ness invalidated her blessings.

Some viewers debated whether it was appropriate for the Rev. Callie Swanlund to bless with her left hand. Photo: Screengrab/How2charist

There are overhead shots, close-up shots, multiple angles and slow-motion sequences. “We wanted to have the people watching it to have an intimate view of the Eucharist that they might never have in a typical Sunday service,” she said. A project with these kind of production values costs money.

The Diocese of Texas was an early backer, according to Swanlund. Carol Barnwell, who was then the diocesan director of communication, “was a cheerleader” even during the an earlier effort that Swanlund realized she was not in a position to pull off. Diocese of Los Angeles Bishop Suffragan Diane Jardine Bruce took Swanlund to meet other bishops in Austin. The diocese became How2charist’s largest backer. Swanlund also contacted other bishops she knew.

There were non-Episcopalians who became supporters, some at the $500-or-more partner level such as Jenn Giles Kemper, the developer of the Sacred Ordinary Days planner. Giles Kemper is what Swanlund called a “liturgical Baptist” from Waco, Texas. “To see another woman entrepreneur say, ‘I’m committed to this project and also to other women doing ministerial entrepreneurship’ was really, really cool,” Swanlund said. “It buoyed me”

The support of 236 Kickstarter backers, including dioceses, congregations and individuals, raised $35,000. Swanlund said many backers whom she did not know have since introduced themselves to her at events and they seem to express “a communal pride” about being part of the project.

The film crew shot from many angles during the Eucharist at Trinity Episcopal Church in Ambler, Pennsylvania. Photo: Jeremy Tackett

Meanwhile, How2charist fit with the mandate that General Convention gave the churchwide staff in 2015 (via Resolution 2015_B009) to create somewhat timeless content that would be available to the church for download. Jeremy Tackett, the church’s digital evangelist and senior manager for creative services, told ENS that “rather than simply try to figure out on our own what kind of content would be attractive to the church, we decided to look for creators who were already in the process of doing unique things in the church.”

He called Swanlund’s Kickstarter effort “innovative” and explained that “if the fundraising was successful on its own, we knew that we’d have a project with buy-in from folks who would use it once created.” Its success gave the Digital Evangelism department “an established proof of concept” that showed that the church’s partnership with Swanlund would be “good stewardship of our resources.”

Swanlund’s fund covered the costs of development and then filming the English language version of the How2charist. Tackett’s department took the project through post-production, including producing a Spanish-language version, and into distribution of the film and guide. (The full-length Spanish video, at which the Rev. Nancy Frausto presided at Church of the Epiphany in Los Angeles, is due out this spring.)

Tackett said he is excited about using the model of How2charist in future projects. “By partnering with creators throughout the church, we’re able to expand the pool of ideas and concepts beyond what those connected directly to our office can conceptualize,” he said. “And by working with creators who have a model for at least ‘seed’ fundraising, we can establish that there’s an audience and market for the product we’re helping bring to life.”

The hope, he said, is that both his office and Swanlund can now become “partners with and guides to other dreamers who are doing unique things in the world of digital ministry, and that we can bring those ideas to a churchwide audience.”

[Anglican Communion News Service] The family of Archbishop Janani Luwum, the former primate of what was then the Church of the Province of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Boga-Zaire, have reconciled with kinsmen of former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, who ordered Luwum’s killing. Uganda’s Black Star News website reports that Canon Stephen Gelenga, from the same Kakwa tribe of Amin, delivered an emotional apology to Luwum’s family and the people of Acholi tribe during commemoration events over the past weekend.

[Anglican Communion News Service] Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has written to the leaders of the 40 autonomous churches in the Anglican Communion to invite them to attend a Primates’ Meeting in January 2020. Primates’ Meetings are one of four “Instruments of Communion” within the Anglican Communion. The last one took place in Canterbury in October 2017. The 2020 meeting will be in the Jordanian capital Amman from Jan. 13 to 17.

[Episcopal News Service] There are several reasons a group of Episcopal bishops is preparing to descend on the nation’s capital next week, but the motivation to travel is rooted in one democratic principle.

“In our legislative process, showing up really does matter,” Connecticut Bishop Ian Douglas, one of the co-conveners of Bishops United Against Gun Violence, said in an interview with Episcopal News Service about the bishops’ upcoming Capitol Hill visits.

During a month when the nation marked one year since the high school massacre in Parkland, Florida, and when five new victims were mourned after a mass shooting at a workplace in Aurora, Illinois, Douglas and his fellow bishops will gather Feb. 27 on Capitol Hill to represent a “culture of life in the face of a culture of death.” Eight bishops, working with the Episcopal Church’s Office of Government Relations, are scheduled to spend the day meeting with lawmakers and their staffs to advocate for legislation toughening regulations on background checks for gun purchasers.

Bishops United also will hold internal planning meetings while in Washington, D.C., as well as meetings with partners in the push to end gun violence, such as the Brady Campaign, the Newtown Foundation, Everytown for Gun Safety and Guns Down America. The week will culminate March 1 with a brief prayer service that will be streamed live on Facebook, part of Bishops United’s series of services held every Friday during Epiphany and hosted by bishops around the country.

Bishops United Against Gun Violence is a network of about 80 Episcopal bishops that formed in the wake of two mass shootings in 2012, at a Sikh temple just outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Despite the national outcry over such violence, calls for gun safety reforms have gained little traction in Congress, even as the number of mass shootings continues to climb.

Douglas, though, remains hopeful.

“I’d like to believe the landscape is changing,” he said, pointing to the large freshman class of lawmakers after November’s midterm elections.

The Episcopal Church’s Office of Government Relations is arranging for the Capitol Hill visits of eight Episcopal bishops on Feb. 27. Photo: David Paulsen/Episcopal News Service

Such measures are just a piece of the wider package of reforms that Bishops United and its partners are advocating, including toughening enforcement of existing gun laws, making gun trafficking a federal crime, promoting “smart gun” technology and spending more money on research into violence-prevention strategies. The bishops’ immediate focus will be on background checks, but their scope is broader, Douglas said.

“I’m taking the long view on this one,” he said. “This is not going to be a one-off. It’s about culture change and awareness.”

And the bishops, a mix of gun owners and others who have never fired a gun, stress that ending gun violence shouldn’t be a partisan issue. They are deliberate about highlighting the “common sense” behind the measures they are advocating.

“The goal in Bishops United was always to be about common-sense gun laws that could bring as many people to the table as possible,” said Milwaukee Bishop Steven Miller, who also is a Bishops United convener. Miller won’t be joining the Capitol Hill visits but will be in Washington for the subsequent partner meetings and prayer service.

“All of us want sane and reasonable gun laws that protect both the rights of those who wish to own firearms and use them in appropriate ways but also to keep our country and our streets safer,” Miller said.

The latest statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show gun deaths in the U.S. are on the rise, with the number of fatalities nearing 40,000 people in 2017. Of those, about 24,000 were suicides and about 15,000 homicides.

“We are in an epidemic,” Maryland Bishop Eugene Sutton, representing Bishops United, said in July during a committee hearing on the General Convention resolution. “Think of the cost to our families, our communities, our health systems.”

The Office of Government Relations also has been active on the issue of gun violence, based on church policies set by General Convention. The office monitors legislation, coordinates with partner agencies and denominations, develops relationships with lawmakers and encourages Episcopalians’ activism through its Episcopal Public Policy Network. The bishops’ visits on Capitol Hill amplify that work.

“As bishops, what we bring uniquely to this conversation is the voice of a particular Christian denomination that has gone on the record by General Convention for gun safety,” Douglas said. “In addition to that, we are speaking out of our conviction as Christians in the Jesus Movement that the loving, liberating and life-giving reality of Jesus commands us to address matters that are death dealing.”

Advocacy is only one part of the mission of Bishops United Against Gun Violence. With mass shooting deaths still all too common, the network also is committed to providing spiritual and pastoral support to those affected by gun violence, Douglas said. Public liturgies are another major component of the bishops’ work.

Last year during General Convention, Bishop United gathered each day at the convention center in Austin, Texas, for five-minute liturgies that included prayers for victims of gun violence. Those services were streamed on Facebook and attracted a sizable viewership, as did a larger public liturgy in a park across from the conference center.

The positive response to those liturgies prompted the bishops to consider ways to continue that witness after General Convention. In November, Bishops United Against Violence released its “Litany in the Wake of a Mass Shooting.” The bishops’ discussions also led to the Friday prayer services this year, and some have drawn as many as 4,000 viewers, Douglas said.

“Where else in The Episcopal Church are you getting 4,000 people together to pray?” he said.

Last week, Western Massachusetts Bishop Douglas Fisher hosted the prayer service, and Chicago Bishop Jeffrey Lee followed up the next day, Feb. 15, with a litany in memory of the Aurora shooting victims in his diocese. This week, on Feb. 22, the prayer service will be led by former Newark Bishop Mark Beckwith.

The prayer service next week during the bishops’ trip to Washington will be held at noon ET March 1 in the chapel of the building where the Office of Government Relations offices are located. It is expected to last about a half hour. Check Bishops United’s Facebook page that day for the video feed.

St. Alban’s Episcopal Church vestry member Doug Hunt talks with the Rev. Kevin Jones and vestry colleague Pam Hardaway about the arrangement of a new storage shed that holds non-perishable food for the parish’s ministry to international students. Photo: Mary Frances Schjonberg/Episcopal News Service

The budding food pantry at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church grew out of the parish’s desire to find ways to connect with University of Texas at Arlington, or UTA, two blocks away. “I don’t think we really knew what that was going to be,” said Doug Hunt, a St. Alban’s vestry member.

Pam Hardaway, another vestry member, said the parish’s previous ministry of offering lunch to UTA students was popular for a while as were some night activities, but then they seemed to wane.

Last May, Johnson and some parishioners talked with a representative of the university’s student affairs office, and “the conversation quickly moved into food,” he said. The university has a large number of international students, mostly Hindu and Muslim. They have some other food-assistance options, but they weren’t as robust as they had been, according to Hunt.

“And they were being proselytized,” said the Rev. Kevin Jones, St. Alban’s rector, referring to feeding ministries of other Christian organizations.

They began to research how best to set up such a ministry. The pantry became a part of the 4Saints Food Pantry, a ministry of a group of Episcopal parishes in the Diocese of Fort Worth. It formed another partnership with Green’s Produce, a local farm market and garden center.

After scouting locations and contacting UTA’s International Student Organization, the group chose a location just off campus near an international student housing area. It is actually the parking lot of another church. The student organization suggested once-a-month distribution on a Saturday afternoon.

Members of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Arlington, Texas, pre-bag food for a monthly distribution to international students at nearby University of Texas at Arlington. Photo: Mary Frances Schjonberg/Episcopal News Service

The pantry launched in November. The group had 50 bags of food, and 32 students came. December saw a drop to 18 students, a decline Hunt said could be attributed to the double whammy of it being finals week and the Saturday of a home football game. The pantry did not run in January because of semester break.

The effort has been evolving ever since. Jones said recently that UTA’s Student Affairs Office asked that St. Alban’s move the pantry on campus to the Athletic Center, which gets a lot of foot traffic on Saturdays. The International Student Organization stepped up their publicity, and the Student Counseling and Psychological Services Office asked the church to provide food stocks for students whom they knew were experiencing food insecurity.

In two hours on Feb. 2, they gave away everything they had with them: 65 bags of food, plus fresh fruit and vegetables from Greens Produce, 50 loaves of bread, and dozens of bottles of spices and cans of coconut milk, among other things, said Johnson.

One young woman asked, “You mean you’re not going to make me pray with you first?” When Johnson told her, “It’s just free food. No strings attached,” he said, “a big smile appeared on her face.”

“The program is on a measurably positive trajectory,” Johnson said, and the parish is excited. “It really was one of those things where their needs lined up with our resources.”

Hardaway agreed, adding, “I think this is a calling that maybe we have not really been listening to for a while.”

Episcopal Campus Ministry’s Student Food Pantry in Eugene, Oregon

The Student Food Pantry, run by the Diocese of Oregon’s Episcopal Campus Ministry in Eugene, operates out of a converted one-car garage. Photo: Episcopal Campus Ministry

Like many such pantries, the Student Food Pantry less than a block from the University of Oregon campus partners with a local food bank, Food for Lane County. The pantry, which began in 2011, is part of the ministry of the Diocese of Oregon’s Episcopal Campus Ministry program. It also serves students from a community college, a private Christian university and a small alternative college, according to the Rev. Doug Hale, who has run the ministry since 2013.

Food for Lane County supplies most of the student pantry’s food. While Hale said the student pantry does not always control what it gets, coordinators try to make good choices. “From the very beginning the pantry had some connection with the health center at the university and the dietician in particular, and so from the beginning there was a concern about trying not offer junk,” he said.

In the pantry there is a shelf of canned produce and a section of “good portion sources shelf-stable,” a grains section and in the center, “we try to have, if it’s available, as much fresh produce that we can offer in the space,” he said. The pantry has a refrigerator and a freezer so it can offer frozen meats and vegetables, plus yogurt from a local company.

“And it’s all crammed into this one single-car garage,” Hale said.

Last year the pantry served about 100 people weekly. When they decided to go from one to two days a week, Wednesdays and Thursdays, “the number jumped immediately” to about 150, he said. Now about 190 students a week come through, an increase Hale attributes to social media promotion and word of mouth.

People have to show that they are enrolled in the schools to use the pantry, and they can come once a week, which Hale said is more frequent than some other Eugene pantries allow. If a student has children, that increases how much they can take on each visit.

The pantry’s relationship with the university has waxed and waned over the years, Hale said, and now is in good shape. The current administration is experimenting with a number of programs to fight food insecurity among students. It is also looking at whether it can lease the pantry what Hale calls “a significantly larger space.” Increasing the pantry’s capacity might allow it to begin serving staff and faculty who also struggle with food insecurity issues, he said.

Asked what advice he might have for other Episcopal congregations and ministries in college towns, Hale suggested first connecting with local food banks. Then “take a look around at what is being offered,” either on campus or by other community organizations, and see where they might fit.

Houston Canterbury

Houston Canterbury spent the last academic year looking at who comes to a 20-year-old Wednesday community meal at the University of Houston run by the campus ministry association, what the Rev. Eileen O’Brien called the association’s “big feed model.” Monitoring student IDs and some face-to-face interviews showed they were largely reaching international students who were paying for their own education but struggled with living costs and graduate students who did not have a meal plan and who were on campus at the time of the Wednesday meal.

“We weren’t getting to those undergrad students who do actually struggle with food scarcity,” said O’Brien, who said undergraduates at commuter schools like University of Houston are often the least connected to the campus.

O’Brien, who will soon begin a new job as rector of St. James Episcopal Church in Austin, Texas, said Houston Canterbury is trying to decide how to better serve the university community. The “big feed” will continue and in fact has expanded to include Thursday “Coffee in the Lobby” at its home base, the A.D. Bruce Religious Center.

Houston Canterbury is hoping to partner with campus organizations to find more ways to address the issue, including helping commuter students find services nearer to their homes. That next step will begin, she predicted, with conversations with the university’s student affairs office and the school’s Urban Experience Program and the Honors College.

The ministry also serves Texas Southern University, but O’Brien said the discussion of about food insecurity is not as far along at the commuter campus that is right across the street from the University of Houston. “One of the questions that we were thinking about was if we established some sort of food bank program, could it not serve both campuses?”

O’Brien said her time with Houston Canterbury made her “interested in how campus missionaries can do a better job of knowing the communities that our students come from and having good referrals within those communities” so that they can help commuter students find resources closer to their homes.

The interest came, she said, as the study showed her that the traditional ways campus ministries address hunger may not be the best ways to serve students. “I think that we’re naive if we get complacent with these sort of feeding programs and don’t step beyond them to address wider community health issues like food scarcity.”

Smokey’s Pantry at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville

Tables in the middle of Smokey’s Pantry at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville are typically used for produce. The produce in the green bins is grown on campus at the UT Grow Lab, a campus garden. Photo: Smokey’s Pantry

At Tyson House, the Lutheran and Episcopal campus ministry at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, or UTK, Smokey’s Pantry has been serving students every Tuesday during the academic year since January 2016. “We have a little bit of everything, from canned goods to fresh produce,” said CaitlynneFox, Tyson House ministry coordinator and pantry intern.

Smokey’s has a partnership with a local community food bank. FISH Hospitality provides fresh produce, bread, meat, yogurt and hummus “along with the traditional canned goods and pastas,” she said.

“Our main goal is to serve the UTK students, faculty and staff, but it’s open to anyone who wants to come in and get food,” said Rusty Graham, Tyson House administrator.

Between 60 and 80 families come each week, meaning 80 to100 individuals get food from Smokey’s. There is no screening process for those who come to the pantry, and it was just this semester, Graham said, that they start asking if the individuals who came were students.

The pantry wanted to be able to know how many students it is serving, he said. They collaborated with one the offices at UTK that wanted to get more information about food insecurity on campus. “Ultimately, it’s going to help us know the impact that we’re having on campus. Those kinds of numbers will be great if we decide to pursue things like grant funding or just general reporting.”

Even though Tyson House is a denominationally supported ministry, Graham said Smokey’s Pantry is not operated as a faith-based program. “We want to limit any deterrent to guests coming in,” he said. “Eliminating those barriers to guests coming in can be tricky so the fewer barriers …”

“The better,” Fox concluded.

Canterbury Bridge Episcopal Campus Ministry at San Jose State University in San Jose, California

As campus chaplain, the Rev. Kathleen Crowe, a Diocese of San Jose deacon at Canterbury Bridge Episcopal Campus Ministry at San Jose State University, was asked in 2014 to be part of a campus-wide committee to examine the issue of homelessness and food insecurity on the campus in San Jose, California. They found that a third of the nearly 33,000 students “had to decide I am going to buy books, or I am going to eat,” in Crowe’s words.

The immediate response was to begin 15 portable food pantries across the campus in different departments that were stocked by those employees. “Often those shelves would be wiped out very quickly,” she said. Crowe would often talk to the students visiting the pantries, and she was able to give students “gold points” to use to buy meals in the school’s food court.

The 15 pantries were later consolidated into eight larger ones. “The vision had always been to have a permanent pantry on campus,” Crowe said. “And that dream was realized this semester.”

The university agreed to turn its old faculty dining room into such a pantry in partnership with Second Harvest Food Bank. There are perishable and non-perishable food items.

“Students are on their honor, but it is for students that earn less than $33,000 a year,” Crowe said, adding that guests have to prove they are enrolled and must bring reusable bags. The students swipe their ID cards so that the pantry can keep statistics.

The committee put money collection boxes in the food court, labeling them “Help Feed a Spartan,” the school’s nickname. “Those little boxes are stuffed full all the time,” taking in $700 to $800 to go toward buying food for the pantry, she said.

Meanwhile, the teachers of fourth-graders at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in nearby Saratoga asked if Crowe could help them develop a service project. She suggested they make personal hygiene kits. “Our students always need that kind of stuff,” she said.

Grace Café at Christ Episcopal Church in Valdosta, Georgia

Steph Johnson checks out the food set up for Thursday dinner at Grace Café, a ministry of Christ Episcopal Church, across the street from Valdosta State University in Valdosta, Georgia. Photo courtesy of Steph Johnson

What is now known as Grace Café at Christ Episcopal Church across the street from Valdosta State University in Valdosta, Georgia, grew from one woman’s desire to help young people. Steph Johnson and her husband, the Rev. Dave Johnson, Christ Church’s rector, had always been involved somehow in youth ministry. When the congregation’s campus ministry got stalled in its early stages, she took on the job.

Her daughter was in nursing school and Johnson told her to bring all her student friends to dinner at the rectory on Thursday nights. Then she told her son’s friends that they could continue to park for free at the church, “but they had to come and eat dinner with me on Thursday nights.” At the end of the first year, about 30 students were routine diners, and the group was out-growing the rectory. So, Johnson asked the vestry if she could have a house on the church’s campus, and it agreed.

The downstairs is now Grace Café, whose slogan is, “It’s not cheap … it’s free.” Coffee, drinks and snack foods are always available, and when she can afford it, breakfast items. Students of all ethnicities and sexual orientations, homeless and with homes, come to the café for food, Johnson said. Some stay to study and meet up with friends.

About 400-500 people stop by every day, she said. And, about 130 students fill the ground floor of that house, the deck and a nearby building for Thursday dinner.

“I know I have kids who are living in their cars, but they won’t tell me that yet,” she said. “I make sure they have lots of food.” The café has a shelf of ready-to-eat food free for the taking.

The café offers a church service on Sunday mornings followed by lunch. The café is open from 8 a.m. to midnight.

Johnson used to do all the work herself but now she has some helpers. Two other women help in the kitchen, along with two students who want to learn how to cook. Some parishioners bake desserts for Thursday night.

And then there are the interns. Four male students live rent-free above the café in exchange for 20 hours a week working at the café. When Johnson asked the vestry for another house on the church campus, the members agreed again. She renovated that building for five female students, who also intern at the café.

With more and more students coming to Grace Café and with a budding food pantry, costs were increasing, Johnson said. While some people suggested that Johnson could offer Thursday dinner for less money, she refused, saying she wants to treat the students like “honored guests.”

“I would want somebody to treat my kids that way,” she said, adding that she will only “cook things that I would want to eat myself.”

That has meant, recently, parmesan-crusted chicken, homemade fettucine alfredo and roasted broccoli. “I also do a vegetarian option,” she said. “I haven’t quite gotten to the vegan thing yet.”

Dave Johnson decided to ask parishioners to sponsor a meal at $350 a week. Those meals are now covered through this semester and the next. “Now I can take all that money I set aside for the Thursday dinners and put it into the café and the food bank,” she said.

“Basically, I have got a really, really super-supportive vestry that has yet to tell me no,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s because I am the priest’s wife or because they like what’s going on there.”

Students line up near the University of Oregon in Eugene for one of the twice-weekly food distributions at the Student Food Pantry run by the Diocese of Oregon’s Episcopal Campus Ministry in partnership with the local Food for Lane County food bank. Photo: Episcopal Campus Ministry

[Episcopal News Service] Episcopalians in college towns all over the United States are recognizing that many students have to choose between tuition and books or food, and they are trying to help.

Their ministries, often done in partnership with the schools and local food banks, range from start-up to long-established. Many are growing to serve an increasing need. Some are exploring whether what they do is helping. The problem they address is growing, and changing.

Food insecurity among college students is often hidden, bolstered by the myth that students who get financial aid have enough money. Let Steph Johnson explain it from her vantage point at Grace Café, a part of Christ Episcopal Church across the street from Valdosta State University in Valdosta, Georgia.

A sign on the wall at Grace Café says, “It’s not cheap … it’s free.” About 100 students fill the building on the Christ Episcopal Church campus and spill out onto the deck and another building for the Thursday meal. The café is open 8 a.m. to midnight for coffee, snacks and companionship. Photo courtesy of Steph Johnson

“I didn’t realize until I got into this ministry how there are kids who in order to go to college and get their books, they don’t have any food,” said Johnson.

Food insecurity can be an on-going issue for some students but only episodic for others, said the Rev. Doug Hale, who runs the Diocese of Oregon’s Episcopal Campus Ministry. Some students come every week, term after term, to the ministry’s Student Food Pantry. Others come and go as financial crisis hit them or their families. There are also the inexperienced young people who sometimes make bad choices within campus food service systems and the accompanying meal plans that “assume people make good choices,” he said.

Schools with more commuter students find they have different types of hunger issues than schools with a more residential study body, according to the Rev. Eileen O’Brien, who until recently was part of Houston Canterbury. Of the school’s 47,000 students, she said, only 8,000 live in student housing. Many undergrads are coming from nearby communities and may work full time and go to school full time. Some have families with “mixed documentation,” which raises issues about who can legally work, she said.

The brand-new food pantry St. Alban’s Episcopal Church organized for international students and the University of Texas in Arlington strives to offer culturally appropriate goods to the primarily Hindi and Muslim population. Photo: Mary Frances Schjonberg/Episcopal News Service

O’Brien and the Rev. Kevin Jones, rector of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Arlington, Texas, both said international students have different needs and face different financial restrictions. At the University of Houston, international students often get no financial aid and their families back home are making big sacrifices for them to be in school. Most of that money goes toward tuition, not food, housing or clothing. F-1 student visas carry stringent restrictions on work, making it harder for students to make ends meet. A number of international students she knows work “under-the-radar” jobs such as lawn care or parking cars.

Up at the University of Texas-Arlington where the international student population is mainly Hindi and Muslim, Jones said, St. Alban’s budding ministry soon realized that it had to tailor its pantry offerings to the students they hoped to reach. The organizers had to research foods and spices that are more specific to their diets, according to Doug Hunt, a vestry member. “We learned there’s different types of Hindi diets,” he said, adding that the international student organization advised the group on those choices.

The causes of hunger on campus are many

The Wisconsin Hope Lab said in 2015 that its survey of more than 4,000 undergraduates at 10 community colleges across the nation found what it called a “startling” 20 percent of students were hungry and 13 percent were homeless. In April 2018, the group said out of the 43,000 students it studied at 66 institutions in 20 states and the District of Columbia, 36 percent of students were food insecure in the 30 days preceding the survey.

The group, now known as the Hope Center for College, Community and Justice, defines food insecurity as “the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, or the ability to acquire such foods in a socially acceptable manner,” adding that “the most extreme form is often accompanied with physiological sensations of hunger.”

They may have trouble accessing information about their eligibility. The GAO recommends that the Food and Nutrition Service improve student eligibility information on its website and share information on state SNAP agencies’ approaches to help eligible students.

While some may think that hunger is a low-income problem, many students from both lower- and middle-income families who get financial aid still struggle to pay for tuition, room and board, books, fees and other costs. Some who do not qualify for aid still struggle.

All the while, college costs continue to rise. Between 2005–06 and 2015–16, prices for undergraduate tuition, fees, room and board at public institutions rose 34 percent, and prices at private nonprofit institutions rose 26 percent, after adjustment for inflation, the National Center for Education Statistics said last year.

Episcopalians involved in food insecurity work also look for ways to focus attention on the systemic issues that cause food insecurity, often by partnering with college administrations. Crowe was invited to serve on a San Jose State committee to address hunger on campus. Hale is also involved with the University of Oregon’s efforts.

Smokey’s Pantry volunteers (from left) Kathleen Spight, Haley Channell, Lauren Donnelly and Nelly Stepanov were ready Feb. 12 to serve University of Tennessee-Knoxville students at the food pantry run by the Lutheran-Episcopal campus ministry. Photo: Tyson House

It isn’t always easy, though, to get beyond the day-to-day needs. On the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, Rusty Graham, the administrator of Lutheran and Episcopal campus ministry known as Tyson House, which runs Smokey’s Pantry, said “we’re very limited with the human power that we have that goes into the pantry.” Other groups on campus are trying to address the systemic issues “but from our perspective, we have to limit our scope to solving the immediate problem.”

CaitlynneFox, Tyson House ministry coordinator and pantry intern, agreed. “As a campus community, that discussion about addressing the systemic issues has really just begun,” she said.

In her work in Houston, O’Brien tried to convey to Episcopalians and others who are in the position to make systemic changes. She took “the story of real lived experiences of students on campus and tell that story in other places where you had people who could do something about that problems. Campus ministry can help the church building up its consciousness about the lives of young adults.”

[Anglican Communion News Service] Efforts by Anglicans and Episcopalians to tackle human trafficking in Ghana, Hong Kong, the U.S. and the U.K. will be brought to the attention of the U.N. Human Rights Council this week. The Anglican Communion’s Permanent Representative to the U.N., Jack Palmer-White, will tell the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women that faith organizations have a key role to play in preventing trafficking in women and girls in the context of global migration. The committee is hosting a general discussion on the issue on Feb. 22 to help it prepare a “general recommendation” for U.N. member states.

Many of the major liturgies during the Lambeth Conference of bishops take place at Canterbury Cathedral, the seat of the archbishop of Canterbury and what is considered the “mother church” of the Anglican Communion. Photo: Mary Frances Schjonberg/Episcopal News Service

[Episcopal News Service] Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby is not inviting same-sex spouses to the 2020 Lambeth Conference of bishops.

Public word of Welby’s decision came in an Anglican Communion News Service blog post by Anglican Communion Secretary General Josiah Idowu-Fearon. He wrote that “invitations have been sent to every active bishop” because “that is how it should be – we are recognizing that all those consecrated into the office of bishop should be able to attend.” Those invitations traditionally come from the archbishop of Canterbury.

“But the invitation process has also needed to take account of the Anglican Communion’s position on marriage which is that it is the lifelong union of a man and a woman,” Iduwo-Fearon wrote. “That is the position as set out in Resolution I.10 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference. Given this, it would be inappropriate for same-sex spouses to be invited to the conference.”

Iduwo-Fearon said that the archbishop of Canterbury “has had a series of private conversations by phone or by exchanges of letter with the few individuals to whom this applies.”

The Episcopal Church currently has one “active bishop” who has a same-sex spouse. The Rt. Rev. Mary Glasspool was elected as bishop suffragan of the Diocese of Los Angeles in December 2009 and consecrated May 2010. She has been bishop assistant in the Diocese of New York since April 2016. She is married to Becki Sander, her partner of more than 30 years.

Diocese of New York Bishop Assistant Mary Glasspool

Glasspool told Episcopal News Service Feb. 18 in a telephone interview that she received a letter from Welby on Dec. 4, 2018, in which he said that he was writing to her “directly as I feel I owe you an explanation of my decision not to invite your spouse to the Lambeth Conference, a decision that I am well aware will cause you pain, which I regret deeply.”

Welby met with Glasspool and Sander in September when he visited Trinity Wall Street. She called it a get-acquainted session which did not touch on the Lambeth Conference.

Glasspool said she and Sander, New York Bishop Andy Dietsche and New York Bishop Suffragan Allen Shin “have been praying about this and talking about this” since receiving the letter. Presiding Bishop Michael Curry also met with Glasspool and Sander to discuss Welby’s letter. “One of my takeaways was how can we make a positive, creative, responsive witness to the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord?” she said about how they and the church should respond to his decision.

Curry was in South Africa Feb. 18 and issued a short statement saying, “I have not yet had an opportunity to consult with appropriate leadership in the church but will do so.”

Both Glasspool and Sander replied to Welby in separate letters later in December. Glasspool said her two-page letter to Welby, parts of which she read to ENS, told him about her 30-year experience in The Episcopal Church “and where the church has come,” and evoked Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, especially his emphasis on just and unjust laws.

“When will the church accept to it the gift of the LGBTQ community?” she asked Welby. “Young people are watching us. If they haven’t written off all of Christianity for being homophobic, they do find The Episcopal Church inviting and inclusive.”

She told the archbishop that “the important thing I want to say is it’s about love. I am talking about people who love one another and look to the church to support them in their life-long marriage where the values of faithfulness, respect, dignity, truth-telling, monogamy and the love that is our loving God’s gift to all of us are upheld.

“After a lifetime of discussion, I am relatively confident that The Episcopal Church will never again turn its back on the LGBTQ community. Will the same be said of Lambeth 2020?”

Spouses who attended the 2008 Lambeth Conference of bishops pose July 25 on the University of Kent campus in Canterbury. Photo: Anglican Archives

Glasspool told ENS that Sander noted in their conversation about Welby’s decision that it seems to be based in part on an apparent assumption that “spouses are simply an extension of the bishop to whom they are married, and that somehow there is a view of marriage that doesn’t quite sit well with an egalitarian or reciprocal or a mutual partnership” model.

The bishop said that she expects to attend Lambeth 2020, and she has asked Sander to come with her for support. “The issue is will she be included in the conversation,” Glasspool said.

Glasspool said she plans to “consult, as much as people are willing” at the House of Bishops’ previously scheduled meeting March 12-15, 2019, at Kanuga outside Hendersonville, North Carolina. “Not with the expectation that we are all of one mind, but because I do not wish to respond only as an individual, but rather with a sensitivity to the body as a whole,” she said.

Prior to the House of Bishops meeting in March, the church’s Executive Council, composed of bishops, clergy and laity, begins its winter meeting Feb. 21 in Midwest City, Oklahoma.

The Rev. Thomas Brown is due to be ordained and consecrated on June 22 as the next bishop of the Diocese of Maine. He is married to the Rev. Thomas Mousin. The diocese elected Brown on Feb. 9. His election is about to enter the consent process canonically required in all bishop elections. A majority of diocesan standing committees and bishops with jurisdiction must sign off on each election.

Brown told ENS that he would not comment about the Lambeth Conference decision because of his pending consent process.

Across the communion, it is unclear just how many bishops are included in Welby’s decision. Diocese of Toronto Bishop Suffragan Kevin Robertson married Mohan Sharma on Dec. 28, 2018. The diocese congratulated him on his marriage, which was attended by Toronto Archbishop Colin Johnson and Toronto Bishop Diocesan Andrew Asbil. Robertson has not replied to ENS’ request for comment.

The bishops at the 2008 Lambeth Conference of bishops pose July 25 for the traditional group photo. Photo: Anglican Archives

The Lambeth Conference is a periodic gathering of bishops from across the Anglican Communion which the archbishop of Canterbury calls and issues invitations. The last gathering was in 2008. The July 23-Aug 2, 2020, gathering will be held, as is tradition, in Canterbury, England, with most of the sessions at the University of Kent.

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and his wife, Caroline, are featured on the home page of the 2020 Lambeth Conference. Photo: 2020 Lambeth Conference

Spouses have typically participated in a parallel program. However, in 2020, there will be a joint program for the first time. Spouses of bishops will attend combined sessions “at key points in the overall program,” according to information here. There will also be separate sessions on the specific responsibilities of the ministry for bishops and spouses, according to the Lambeth website. The conference’s website features a photo of Welby and his wife, Caroline. The page was recently changed to add a link to Idowu-Fearon’s blog. It now reads, “the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, is sending personal invitations to every eligible bishop and spouse (excluding same-sex spouses) and is looking forward immensely to hosting them.”

Iduwo-Fearon’s statement that “all those consecrated into the office of bishop should be able to attend” the Lambeth gathering might be seen as a certain amount of movement beyond the most-recent previous Lambeth Conference. In 2008 then-Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams refused to invite Bishop Gene Robinson, who had become the first openly gay and partnered bishop in the Anglican Communion in 2003. He served as bishop of New Hampshire until his retirement in January 2013. He and his then-partner of 25 years Mark Andrew were joined in a civil union in 2008 and married in 2010. They divorced in 2014.

At the House of Bishops meeting in March 2008, three bishops whom then-Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold asked to discuss Robinson’s then-still-pending invitation reported that “a full invitation is not possible.”

Robinson urged his colleagues not to boycott the conference because of his exclusion. Instead, addressing the House, he urged them to participate fully in it, and thanked all who were willing to “stay at the table.”

At the end of that meeting, the bishops said in part that “Even though we did not all support the consecration of the Bishop of New Hampshire, we acknowledge that he is a canonically elected and consecrated bishop in this church. We regret that he alone among bishops ministering within the territorial boundaries of their dioceses and provinces, did not receive an invitation to attend the Lambeth Conference.”

Then-Diocese of New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson signs copies of his book “In the Eye of the Storm” July 31, 2008, in the Lambeth Conference Marketplace on the University of Kent campus in Canterbury. Photo: Mary Frances Schjonberg/Episcopal News Service

Some other bishops from across the more than 165 countries in which the Anglican Communion is present refused to attend the 2008 Lambeth Conference due to theological disagreements with the main body of the church about the full inclusion of LGBTQ people and women in the life of the church.

Robinson went to the gathering in what he called an act of witness. Organizers permitted him to be in the Lambeth Marketplace, the conference’s display and sales area, an invitation he initially refused. He was also allowed to attend two receptions hosted by Episcopal Church bishops that were specifically intended to allow him to meet colleagues from around the world. He was invited to worship and speak at several other venues in the Canterbury area, including the University of Kent’s law school.

Interfaith volunteers at Good Samaritan Episcopal Church in San Diego, California, gather weekly in the church’s sanctuary to sort through clothing and other donations. Here, Senior Warden Penny Powell and the Rev. Janine Schenone, rector, sort through donations. Photo: Lynette Wilson/Episcopal News Service

[Episcopal News Service – San Diego, California] When last fall U.S. Immigration and Customs Control alerted the San Diego Rapid Response Network it would begin releasing asylum seekers – including families with children – onto the streets, the county’s interfaith and social and human rights organizations responded by setting up temporary shelters.

“A rapid response team here in San Diego brings asylum seekers who’ve been released by border officials to a shelter, provide food and medical attention, and assists the asylum seekers in arranging transportation to family members or others who will host them while their cases are adjudicated, said San Diego Assisting Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, adding that the adjudication process can sometimes take years.

Good Samaritan Episcopal Church was one of the many churches that stepped up identifying immediate needs, such as food, clothing, diapers and cash assistance. The church began accepting clothing and other donations in late October. It has continued to receive donations daily, and once a week, an average 10-12 interfaith volunteers sort clothing donations by size and wearability.

“We felt it was the right thing to do,” said Carol Hamilton, Good Samaritan’s outreach chair. “One of the most beautiful things for us is that it has drawn in other faith communities.”

In the three years the Rev. Janine Schenone has served as rector, she’s encouraged the congregation to get more involved in social justice and outreach, said Hamilton.

“She’s been such a support and driving force to move us out of our comfort zone,” she said. “We are very mixed politically and this has brought so many people together.”

At first, said Schenone, some members of the congregation were concerned the church was helping undocumented immigrants, but when it became clear they were assisting people seeking legal entry into the United States through the asylum process, they got behind it.

Carol Hamilton, Good Samaritan Episcopal Church’s outreach chair, greets Tyler Seibert, who is also a rapid responder, as he delivers donations to the church. Photo: Lynette Wilson/Episcopal News Service

Good Samaritan has assisted some 6,000 asylum seekers since October, when ICE began releasing large numbers of asylum seekers into communities without a support system. That was when Good Samaritan and other partners in the San Diego Rapid Response Network, an existing coalition of human rights, social services and legal aid organizations, mobilized.

Shelters offer asylum seekers, a place where they can find food, rest, a shower and clothing before boarding buses and airplanes to unite with family member across the country, said Shenone, who has used her discretionary fund to provide travel cash to families traveling to other parts of the country.

“You can’t just stick people on the bus without food, diapers, money,” she said. “The real heroes are the people [volunteers] who were showing up at the bus station.”

From the time of initial need, the interfaith community advocated for a crisis declaration, hoping the government would assist the way it did in 2016 when a surge of Haitian asylum seekers crossed the border, said Kevin Malone, executive director of the San Diego Organizing Project, a nonpartisan, multi-faith network of 28 congregations in San Diego County.

“[Former California] Gov. [Jerry] Brown opened up the armory to process a lot of people really fast, but it’s a completely different crisis, they are not moving thousands across in a short period … it’s been 50-70 a day for a long time, and in a way that leaves them on the street.”

“Without us they would have added to the homeless population – people were coming across with no money – and that would have been awful,” said Malone. “We were able to act quickly because we have these existing networks.”

Eventually, after the network’s temporary shelter was forced to move four times because of safety concerns, on Jan. 29 the San Diego Board of Supervisors voted to lease an old courthouse to the San Diego Rapid Response Network to operate a shelter for asylum seekers through 2019.

Until late January, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol processed up to 100 asylum seekers a day; the Trump administration reduced that number to 20 on Jan. 25.

On Feb. 11, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an order to withdraw two-thirds of the state’s National Guard troops from the border, disputing claims of an “illegal immigration crisis” and calling it nothing but “political theater,” according to coverage from Reuters.

On Feb. 15, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency to build a border wall citing an invasion on at the southern border.

Apprehension of people crossing the border illegally fell to some 396,000 in 2018, down from a peak of 1 million in 2006. The rights of persecuted people to seek asylum and undocumented immigration often become conflated in political arguments.

“Frequent public misunderstanding of the distinction between ‘asylum seeker’ and ‘undocumented immigrant’ adds to the confusion. Asylum seekers do so legally, whether they are met by officials at the border or after entering the United States,” said Jefferts Schori. “It is vital to recognize that seeking asylum is a legal right. Even if a person crosses the border without official permission, international law requires that the request for asylum be heard.”

The Episcopal Church, through General Convention and Executive Council resolutions, has a long history of supporting refugees, asylum seekers and migrants. During the 79th General Convention held last July in Austin, Texas, Episcopalians gathered outside a detention center housing migrant women in public witness to the Trump administration’s immigration policies separating families.

In the time since, Episcopalians have joined interfaith efforts across the Southwest to respond to and shed light on the humanitarian crisis at the border in places like El Paso, Texas, which borders Ciudad Juarez, and in San Diego.

The San Ysidro port of entry connecting Tijuana and San Diego is the busiest border crossing in the United States, both in terms of economics and people. People and students cross the border daily for work and to attend school.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent patrols the U.S.-Mexico border fence between Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego, California, in what is, on the United States side, Friendship Park. Photo: Antonio Zaragoza for Episcopal News Service

For 20 years a slatted border fence has separated San Diego from Tijuana. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Agents patrol the United States side, where a state park and a protected estuary form a buffer between the border and the nearest residential beach community. On the Tijuana side, people live up close to the fence, which extends into the Pacific Ocean.

The existing border fence, however, has not deterred migrant caravans and asylees’ arrival at the border. (In 2014, an unprecedented number of unaccompanied minors fleeing violence in Central America were detained crossing the border.)

The border fence between Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego, California, was first constructed in the 1990s during President Bill Clinton’s administration. Photo: Antonio Zaragoza for Episcopal News Service

Hundreds of Central American migrants began arriving Nov. 14, 2018, in Tijuana, and other ports of entry. The caravans have been politicized in United States and in their Central American countries of origin, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, where one of the main drivers of migration – forced displacement by violence – is often denied. Here in the United States, Trump has called economic migrants and asylum-seekers an “assault on our country,” and last November the president deployed National Guard troops to the border.

“The current border crisis is centered on aiding asylum seekers as they leave the border to wait for their cases to be adjudicated. The level of violence in Central America has caused thousands of people to flee for their lives, and many are seeking asylum in the United States,” said Jefferts Schori. “Those seeking asylum are women with small children, families, unaccompanied minors and single individuals of working age.

“They have left home because they are afraid, particularly after family members and friends have been killed and threatened in a place they used to call home, but no longer supports life.”

[Anglican Communion News Service] Tributes have been paid to Bishop of Tamale Jacob Ayeebo, who died suddenly this week in the office of his diocese’s development agency. He was 58.

Ayeebo, the second bishop of Tamale in Ghana, part of the Church of the Province of West Africa, died Feb. 12 at the offices of the Anglican Diocese Development and Relief Organization, in Bolgatanga, Ghana. The cause of death was reported as congestive cardiac failure. Funeral arrangements are being finalized. He leaves a wife, Rita, a daughter and three sons.

During his tenure, Ayeebo built a partnership with Episcopal Relief & Development and collaborated with Episcopal Church staff on integrated programs to address poverty and disease in the Upper East region.

[Anglican Communion News Service] Three people were confirmed this week in the southernmost cathedral in the Anglican Communion – but the cathedral’s bishop, the Rt. Rev. Tim Thornton, had to travel some 8,000 miles from his office in London, England, for the service. The Falkland Islands are not within an Anglican Communion province but rather an Extra Provincial area under the metropolitical authority of the archbishop of Canterbury. The bishop to the Falklands is a post held by the bishop at Lambeth – the senior episcopal assistant to the archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth Palace.

[Episcopal News Service] At Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, it is being used to frame small group discussions about cultural issues and Friday morning worship. At Episcopal Divinity School in New York, it has deepened the seminary’s commitment to justice issues. And at Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California, it is shaping seminarians’ field work in local parishes.

This is the Way of Love in action, with an emphasis on Christian formation.

The Rev. Stephanie Spellers is canon to the presiding bishop for evangelism, reconciliation and creation. Photo: David Paulsen/Episcopal News Service

The church encouraged Episcopal seminaries and schools of theology to incorporate this framework into their programs of theological education in ways appropriate to their individual contexts. Such institutions were an ideal venue for experimentation because of their “quasi-monastic” atmosphere and their influence on the future of the church, said the Rev. Stephanie Spellers, the presiding bishop’s canon for evangelism, reconciliation and creation care.

“Change in the experience of theological education yields a changed church,” Spellers told Episcopal News Service. “If we can help to make seminary a time of deep engagement with spiritual practice and … help people to develop a deeper relationship with Jesus during those years, pretty soon you’ve got a very different church.”

Virginia Theological Seminary, or VTS, is one example of an institution that has taken the Way of Love and run with it.

Lisa Kimball, the school’s associate dean for lifelong learning and a member of the team that helped Curry develop the Way of Love, said she is supervising a student developing a Way of Love parish retreat for Lent as part of an independent study. Kimball also has presented the Way of Love to the Christian formation courses she teaches, while highlighting the growing church-wide trove of resources based on the framework.

Students are leading the way, too. A VTS student worship team kicked off Friday morning services this month centered on the Way of Love practices. A working group at the seminary is developing a faculty rule of life based on the Way of Love. It has been shared with the campus community by e-newsletter, and Kimball encourages students who find examples in the congregations where they worship to bring those ideas back to campus and share them.

“I feel committed to the ambitious goal that everyone that graduates from VTS will be familiar with the Way of Love as the perfect process it is for discipleship,” Kimball told ENS, “and therefore will know where the resources are and will have a powerful model for inviting people to practice the way of love … in ministry.”

Worshippers were given Way of Love wallet cards at the July 5 opening Eucharist of the 79th General Convention in Austin, Texas, as seen in this photo taken from an Episcopal Church video of the service.

The seven practices should be familiar to most Christians, but by pulling them together in a rule of life, the presiding bishop’s team sought to give Episcopalians a clearer idea for how to live out their faith as part of what Curry often calls “the Jesus Movement.”

TURN: Pause, listen and choose to follow Jesus.

LEARN: Reflect on Scripture each day, especially on Jesus’ life and teachings.

PRAY: Dwell intentionally with God each day.

WORSHIP: Gather in community weekly to thank, praise and dwell with God.

BLESS: Share faith and unselfishly give and serve.

GO: Cross boundaries, listen deeply and live like Jesus.

REST: Receive the gift of God’s grace, peace and restoration.

That’s the starting point. Episcopal institutions, from Forward Movement to Forma, are building from there, treating the Way of Love like a piece of open-source computer software for the soul. The Episcopal Church is promoting its own resources tied to the liturgical year, with materials now available for Lent.

“The approach that we’ve tried to make is to offer a framework, offer a very generous shape for a rule of life, and then step back and let the people and the spirit take it where they need to go,” Spellers said. “I’m very excited to see what will seminaries do with this.”

Most recently, Episcopal seminaries and schools of theology have been applying the Way of Love to their Lenten preparations.

The Rev. Caroline Carson, a deacon and third-year seminarian at Sewanee: University of the South in Tennessee, has produced Lenten reflections each year while at the seminary, and this year she is incorporating the seven Way of Love practices.

“Sometimes, it may be a call to fast for that afternoon in reflection of an area of the Anglican Communion in strife,” Carson said in an emailed statement. “Sometimes, it may be an invitation to worship in a different setting. Often it will be a question asking how will you be a visible sign of God’s love to someone today?”

Carson also is developing a Way of Love community bulletin board to collect students’ ideas, and she plans to create a Way of Love station in campus commons room, where students can come for baked goods and take slips of paper that combine lines of Scripture with calls to reflect, pray and learn.

At the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, “we really don’t implement that within our curriculum officially,” spokesman Eric Scott said, but the seminary maintains close relationships with local parishes, where talk of the Way of Love has “exploded.”

“It kind of informally works its way into classrooms,” Scott said. “We really empower our students to build those things organically on their own.”

Presiding Bishop Michael Curry preaches Feb. 11 at General Theological Seminary’s Chapel of the Good Shepard in New York. Photo: General Theological Seminary

“This Jesus of Nazareth has shown us the way,” Curry said. “This Jesus of Nazareth, his way of love is the way of life. It is the way that will set us all free.”

Episcopal Divinity School, or EDS, welcomed its first cohort of 10 seminarians in the fall after reaching an affiliation agreement with Union Theological Seminary. Miguel Escobar, director of Anglican Studies at EDS, said he and the Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas, dean of EDS, were inspired by Curry’s sermon at General Convention when he first spoke of the Way of Love.

EDS “has a long history of seeing the Gospel as very focused on justice issues,” Escobar said in an interview with ENS, citing racial justice, poverty alleviation and environmental conservation. The Way of Love, from that perspective, is also the way of justice, he said, and with each of the seven practices, “there’s actually a public justice aspect of it.”

“Go,” in particular, speaks to the Christian call to work toward a better community for all members, Escobar said. The “Turn” toward Jesus also entails a turn away from hatred and fear. And in “Prayer,” Episcopalians are urged to pray for the least among us, but also to pray with the least among us in the community, he said.

Although EDS has not yet created any new educational or formation offerings for its students based specifically on the Way of Love, Escobar said the presiding bishop’s rule of life is informing conversations in EDS classrooms and beyond.

Jed Dearing, a second-year seminarian at Church Divinity School of the Pacific, or CDSP, is helping a nearby Episcopal parish, St. John’s in Ross, connect its parishioners to the Way of Love. At a parish retreat in September, he led a session about developing a rule of life and another session about contemplative prayer as seen through the lens of the Way of Love.

St. John’s has been active in encouraging parishioners to take up the seven practices. This month, the congregation is focusing on “Bless,” with a discussion group on Feb. 10 and a “mini-retreat” planned for March 2.